


tissue and bone (it was a tryst)

by Kirjavi



Category: Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: (the center of the fic is ren and hux allowing the other to cause them physical harm), Blood, Choking, Consensual Violence, Fanart Included, Fist Fights, Force Choking (Star Wars), M/M, Post-Battle of Starkiller Base (Star Wars), Power Dynamics, Pre-Canon, there is mention of dicks but it's not the center of the fic don't get your hopes up, when you hate yourself and the other person and yet you are codependent
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-19
Updated: 2021-01-19
Packaged: 2021-03-16 18:46:55
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,244
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28835817
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kirjavi/pseuds/Kirjavi
Summary: Hux wraps his fingers around the pale column of that neck andsqueezes, relishing the contrast of the black leather gloves, slowly becoming more and more stained with Ren’s blood, against the perfect unbroken line of his throat. Ren’s body starts to go limp. Hux does not move. He bares his teeth, imagines it’s his jaws wrapped around his neck instead of his hands, imagines the pristine black leather of his boot crushing his trachea.Pre-Starkiller, Ren and Hux have an unconventional agreement born of mutual need, mutual hatred, and, perhaps, mutual respect.
Relationships: Armitage Hux/Kylo Ren
Comments: 6
Kudos: 38





	tissue and bone (it was a tryst)

**Author's Note:**

> Comes with art from a very dear friend who will remain anonymous and has never seen a Skywalker Saga movie in their life but was introduced to the character of Hux through me and within three days we had clawed both fic and art from each other like rabid animals. Can't remember if the beginning of TLJ Josses the entire ending scene, but at this point I don't care. Title from 'Ready, Able' by Grizzly Bear.

General Armitage Hux enjoys routine. Every day, he wakes up precisely ten minutes before his alarm for alpha shift, lies in bed mentally laying out his daily work, then washes up, shaves precisely how his Empire-born father had taught him, and eats a quick breakfast with a cup of tea he brews himself. He commands the bridge through alpha shift, eats a moderate lunch in the officers’ mess, then holds administrative meetings with the ship’s command through gamma shift until dinner, which he takes in his room, not to be disturbed. He reviews the day’s work, then showers with the limited water allotment officers are given, and on certain occasions perfunctorily jerks off in the fresher before going to sleep, secure in a day’s work well done.

_This_ , Hux thinks, _is neither routine nor work well done._

He knows Ren can hear his thoughts, beams them towards the other man in the hopes that the Force, however it works, can amplify his distaste for the situation he has found himself in at the end of the cycle.

Sloppy. Messy hair, disheveled and misshapen from being crushed under a helmet for hours on end. Overly full lips, trembling with anger. Big brown eyes, begging to be blackened.

“Do you know why I asked you to meet with me, Ren?” he says slowly, purposefully dropping the other man’s title. He stands, ignoring the man standing in front of him (he sees his hands, empty, gloved, twitch at his sides and still). He crosses the room to the small bar set into the wall and pours himself a finger of Corellian brandy. Hux swirls it in the glass, examining the color.

He can _hear_ Kylo Ren grit his teeth.

“You asked me,” and his voice trembles and shakes with anger–no wonder he uses a vocoder when he cannot modulate his voice better than a mere child–”You _asked_ me to meet with you because you had, and I quote, _a matter of resource allocation to discuss with me._ ”

“Yes, that is correct.” He takes a sip of the brandy. The subtle sweetness of it blooms on his tongue. “I’m impressed you remembered so accurately.”

“I find it hard,” and the line of his neck jumps as he swallows, takes a deep breath, “I find it hard to focus on anything else when you insist on _screeching_ –”

Childish. “In the past four cycles, you have dismantled five separate consoles that _I_ have to send in requisition reports for, choked three different officers, and put Sergeant Atopo in the critical care unit after you threw him into a wall.” Hux takes another sip, enjoying the pleasant burn as it runs down his throat. “I find it difficult to understand that Snoke deems you the _only_ Force user in the entire galaxy worthy of being trained when you seem to find such delight in trashing our ship like a child throwing a tantrum.”

A muscle flexes in Ren’s jaw. “You have no idea,” he says lowly, “what it is like to have the Force itself want to tear you apart. What it feels like to hear the thoughts and rage and hope of every single person around me. How it feels to fall apart, every day, and keep going.”

“Does it feel like nearly three thousand credits in damage repair?” 

Ren snarls and the table, pure durasteel bolted to the floor like all ship furniture, _creaks_. “You underestimate me,” he growls. “You, my master, everyone else on this ship–” Hux’s datapad begins to vibrate against the surface of his desk.

“Who else?” Hux says. He finishes his drink as the glass begins to buzz and hum in his hand. Almost imperceptibly, the corner of his mouth quirks up. “Go on, Ren. List them out for me. Your smuggler trash father? Your rebel bitch of a mo–”

_And there it is._ If it weren’t so unbearably cliche, he would almost feel bad for the poor beast. The fine hairs on the nape of his neck rise as the air somehow _thickens_ around him, holds substance, and wraps around his throat. His hands rise automatically to scrabble at his throat, fingers sinking through absolutely nothing as he tries again and again to take a breath.

With the last bit of oxygen in his lungs, he spits at him. Perfect arch. Wonderfully calculated. It lands on his cheekbone, sliding down his face.

Kylo Ren stares at him, the tiny muscle underneath his left eye jumping. Without breaking eye contact, a black-gloved hand wipes away the glob of saliva.

Hux’s field of vision slowly narrows down to black.

The air shifts again and he crumples to the floor, gasping for breath. Something wet and hot trickles down his upper lip. He licks at it instinctively, already expecting the metallic salty taste of blood. “Mummy issues,” he spits. His voice is rough, as if he’d been screaming for hours. “How unbearably trite.”

“Do you ever.” Ren grabs him by the open lapels of his uniform jacket and hoists him up off the floor. “Shut.” He bulls him backwards, pinning him to the cold ferrocrete wall. “ _Up._ ” Teeth snap, bared in a snarl an inch from his throat.

Hux can feel his face twist into a proper smile. It is not a nice smile. People have likened it to a rancor’s maw split open. “Make me,” he hisses, and head-butts him right on the bridge of that overlong nose.

Hux did not specialize in hand-to-hand combat. He was trained in it, of course, once he became old enough to enroll in an Imperial-style academy. He had excelled in it, as he did all things, but he much prefers other people’s hands be dirtied rather than his own. Even so, he finds no difficulty at all in taking advantage of watching Ren’s head reel dizzily back to drive forward with his shoulder, sending him sprawling backwards to the floor.

Ren hits the floor and recovers gracefully enough, catching himself on one gloved hand and righting himself in a swirl of tattered black cloth. His lips bow in a grimace of sheer rage, teeth glistening in the harsh fluorescent ship lights, and he rushes at him like a rathtar set loose.

Hux is quick enough in his reflexes to avoid a hit to the face, but an elbow strikes him in the tender vulnerable spot over his ribs and he feels the air get knocked out of his lungs for the second time in as many minutes. He buckles over, trying to heave air back into lungs that have forgotten how to work, and catches a gloved fist with his face, feeling the leather catch and tear the delicate skin of his lip. He licks at the cut, relishing both the tang of blood and the flare of pain, and bares his teeth. “Come on,” he hisses. “Harder.”

He hurls himself at the other man, feeling with almost prescient delight the vicious uppercut he aims at his chin a fraction before it lands, the phantom click of his teeth as his jaw slams shut. Hux bloodies his nose before he can recover, red droplets glistening like jewels on the knuckles of his gloves. He manages to throw a final sharp, bony elbow at his solar plexus before Ren moves in, jamming his range through sheer mass and grabbing his wrist like a child. His grip is tight enough that he knows he will bruise later tonight.

He twists his wrist, trying desperately to break free of Ren’s grasp, but his grip is like iron. It almost happens too fast for him to notice when a foot hooks around his calf and sends them toppling to the ground. Ren settles his weight on top of him, twining his soft-worn boots around his legs to pin him in place. Hux watches, breath dragging harsh in his bruised throat, as Ren sits up and, inexplicably, puts the tip of his gloved finger in his mouth.

“What–” Hux starts, and watches in silence as Ren bites down and yanks his head away like a dog gnawing at a bone.

Ren smirks at him, teeth toying with his full bottom lip. He can feel his breath shuddering through his entire body.

He puts the bare warmth of his hand down on his throat and _pushes_. “Shut _up_ ,” Ren growls. “I won’t tell you again.”

His hand is not as immutable as the Force and Hux finds that, if he settles for little sips of air, he won’t black out quite as fast. His hand–his bare skin–hot from under that leather glove, burns like a brand on his skin. “ _Fuck_ you, Ren,” he gasps out. His own hands, still gloved, wrap around his wrist, trying to pull him away.

Ren shifts atop him, trying to pin his hips down better, and freezes. Hux can’t breathe, not even the meagre oxygen he can pull into his lungs. “ _General_ ,” Ren breathes. Hux watches him tilt his head and wishes viciously that Ren had his stupid mask on so he didn’t have to witness the mocking delight that spreads across his face. “I never knew, this whole time–”

Ren cants his hips back, and if Hux didn’t know better he’d think he was _grinding_ down, dragging across the length of his trapped erection–

Hux snarls at him and traps his wrist against his throat, his other hand shooting the heel of his palm up to slam into his jaw at the same place he hit him earlier. With delight, he sees Ren’s own teeth sink into his overly plush lips, piercing the skin and sending droplets of blood spiraling slowly down to spatter against Hux’s cheek.

“Fuck,” says Ren. His tongue darts out unconsciously to lap at the wet red line bisecting his lips.

Hux twitches, trying his grip again. Nothing.

Ren looks at him. Hux looks back, hating him, hating himself.

Ren leans down–Hux stiffens instinctively, tamping down that instinctive rush of endorphins, of pleasure, as his weight shifts–and swipes his tongue across his face, right where his blood is beginning to dry on his skin.

Hux growls a wordless sound of utter disgust–”You _beast_ , Rebel filth, you freak–” Ren’s breath is hot on his cheek and he can _smell_ him, the animal scent of him with the smell of his own blood on his breath–

He wrenches Ren’s head down against his chest and _pushes_ , bridging up off the ground and flipping them over. “I _hate_ you,” Hux hisses, shoving the thick-muscled legs coming to wrap around his waist down to the floor, pinning them with his own. Ren’s saliva cools on his cheek. He can still feel the wet push of his tongue over his skin, can’t stop replaying it in his head–“You are infuriating, sloppy, arrogant–”

“Snobbish,” Ren growls, powerful muscles flexing as he tries to break his grip. “Uptight, bootlicking, obsessed with control–”

Hux wraps his fingers around the pale column of that neck and _squeezes_ , relishing the contrast of the black leather gloves, slowly becoming more and more stained with Ren’s blood, against the perfect unbroken line of his throat. He can feel him trying to gather his strength, try to push against him and flip them again and he bears down harder, watching red bloom in his eyes as blood vessels burst. The leather creaks, catches and slides against sweat-slicked skin.

Ren’s body starts to go limp. Hux does not move. He bares his teeth, imagines it’s his jaws wrapped around his neck instead of his hands, imagines the pristine black leather of his boot crushing his trachea.

Ren _grins_ at him, open-mouthed and hungry, and tilts his head back, baring more of his throat to his hands.

Hux watches his chin, upturned, form a near-perfect line with his throat. There’s a mole next to the bump of his Adam’s apple and maddeningly, he finds himself wanting to bite it. To run his tongue, his lips, the blunt edge of his teeth over that tiny imperfection.

Not a second later, a bare finger taps against his wrist where the glove yields to bare skin. “Enough,” Ren rasps. “That’s enough.”

Without hesitation, Hux removes his hands from his throat and stands up, ignoring the pain as bruises pull and tighten. He gives Ren a moment to catch his breath, then pulls him up.

“Come on, then,” Hux says, and dabs at the drying blood on his lip. “Let me patch you up.”

There’s really not much for him to do this time around. He swings open the small cooler next to the bar and hands Ren a coldpack for the worst of the bruising (he does not watch as Ren ices the purpling bruises he’s left on his neck, but he can hear the quiet intake of his breath as the cold hits his skin). He defrosts a bacta pad and frowns at Ren until he gets the point and leans down to allow Hux to smooth it over the cut on his lip. “Don’t remove it for a few hours at least,” he tells him, as if he doesn’t know already. Ren nods, as if he hasn’t heard it before.

Hux never allows Ren to return the favor, and Ren never offers. He takes care of his own wounds, miscellaneous cuts and bruises, by himself. 

He leaves Ren behind in order to soak his gloves in the fresher sink before the stains sink in. The blood that dried, cracked and ugly, into the knuckles of the gloves seeps out into the hot water, staining it a pale pink. If he tries hard enough, he can smell the faint scent of iron hanging in the air.

He catches a glimpse of himself in the mirror above the sink. Oddly enough, it is the hair he notices first–it’s in absolute disarray, the pomade having melted down enough in the heat that his hair lies disheveled in soft strands of copper across his brow. He frowns and tucks it back as best he can, the strands feeling strange and silklike against skin that has been gloved for too long. He looks a proper mess, with his mouth swelling where Ren hit him and blood caking his upper lip from the Force chokehold. He dampens a towel with water as hot as the tap can get it and wipes it off. He leaves the bruises as they are and returns to the main room.

Ren’s swelling has gone down a bit, but there’s no mistaking the teethmarks embedded in his lip. “You’ll need that mask,” Hux observes, as if Ren ever allows anyone but Hux and the Supreme Leader to see his bare face.

Ren finds his helmet, abandoned early on on the floor, and puts it on. His cowl isn’t up and Hux can see the stark prints of his fingers on his neck.

“Wait,” Hux says impulsively, and Ren freezes. He tilts his head towards him and Hux steps forward. The impassive face of the mask watches him as he fixes the neckline of his cloak so that it hides the bruises, licks his thumb and scrubs at the faint trickle of blood that Ren missed wiping up. “There,” he tells him. “Presentable.”

His throat trembles as he swallows. His pulse rabbits against Hux’s bare fingers and he takes his hand away as if burned. He doesn’t think about what happened mere minutes ago, Ren’s weight bearing him down, grounding him in time and space as inexorable and unyielding as gravity.

“I will see you again, General?” Ren sounds flat under the voice modulator, without the timbre and inflections that richen his voice.

 _It is so transparent_ , Hux thinks, _that he needs this. That he must be beaten, or allow himself to be beaten, and it eases him_. How intoxicating a thing it is to know that the greatest Force user in the galaxy would allow only Hux’s hands around his throat without killing him outright.

“If you cannot find it within yourself to control yourself,” Hux says, measured, ignoring the faint rasp of his voice, “I will do it myself. You know this by now, Ren.”

Ren inclines his head towards him, the closest to a bow or a salute he will get. A whisper of the Force ghosts across the nape of his neck and he does not flinch. “Careful, General,” says the vocoder, “that your own hubris does not blind you to true power.”

Hux sneers. “You know where the door is, Ren,” he says.

The impassive mask regards him for a moment longer, and then in a swirl of cloak and robe he is gone.

Hux counts out one minute, then two, standing still alone in his chamber, until he is absolutely sure that Ren is gone. Then he sits down on the bed, corners still regulation-crisp, runs his hand through hair gone messy and soft, and fumbles at the fly of his uniform pants until he springs out, half-hard and achingly sensitive.

He leans back until his back hits the sheets and sinks his teeth into the bruise Ren’s hand has left on his wrist. The sharp, aching pain has him hard again, and it is no time at all until he is panting, breath hot against his own skin, and spilling into his hand, flushed and sweating and shaking.

He takes his hand away, ignoring the feeling of come cooling on his skin, and stares up at the ceiling. Unconsciously, his tongue goes to worry at the gash torn in his lip, the flare of pain and the familiar taste of blood. He needs to put bacta on that before falling asleep. He closes his eyes, trying to catch his breath.

Dark eyes. Thick waves of hair he could sink his hands into and never let go of. Lips wrapped around his fingers, and teeth pressing hard against his palm.

Ren, unbelievably warm beneath him, tilting his chin up and up to expose the fluttering pulse of his jugular.

He’s cold, suddenly, and he does the bare minimum of cleanup before stripping off the rest of his uniform and crawling in between the covers. The weight, the meagre warmth, does little to comfort him but sleep comes quickly and painlessly that night.

Months later, after Starkiller, after it all falls apart, Ren comes to him again. Hux doesn’t summon him–he’s not sure if he’s in a position to summon anyone, frankly, not after the debacle that is the crown jewel in the armory of the First Order being obliterated by a traitor and a handful of X-Wings.

He is alone in his quarters, robe on and that same Corellian brandy more than half-empty in front of him. The lack of communication from High Command is both concerning and relieving, in a way. No news is not good news nor bad. It is simply just no news.

A request pings through his personal datapad and he glances at it idly.

Ren stands outside his door, only the stiffness of his posture betraying the former fist-sized hole that the Wookie’s bowcaster punched through him not five cycles ago. 

Hux rolls his eyes and presses the microphone feed. “What do you want, Ren?”

He says nothing. He stands there, impassive, and Hux’s temper rises as he stares at the near-static camera feed on his datapad. He punches the mike again. “What do you _want_.”

Ren is still for a breath more, and then slowly, as if it is an enormous effort to move, he leans his helmeted head against the door.

Hux is up off the sofa in a flash, leaving both the datapad and the brandy behind to buzz him through.

He takes off the helmet the moment the door slides shut behind them. The hiss of the vacuum seals breaks the silence and Hux takes a slow, careful breath, schooling his face. It’s the first time he has seen him since he went down to retrieve him, bleeding out in the snow. The wound the scavenger girl gave him is still raw-looking, only the deepest part of the gash underneath his eye covered by a gauze pad.

“You’re lucky you didn’t lose the eye,” Hux observes.

Ren nods. It’s more of a twitch, a jerk of his head downward. His chin trembles before he grits his jaw and stills it.

“What do you want, Ren.” It’s an order, not a question. Hux sits back down on the sofa and crosses his leg, adjusting the robe until it falls to his liking.

Ren stands there, jaw working. Hux lets him stew until he finds his words.

“I require,” he says at last, “control.”

Hux blinks, slowly and deliberately. “And you came to me.” The rage he keeps locked down, simmering like magma just below a planet’s surface, is beginning to rise. He cannot tell if it is simply Ren being infuriatingly occluding, or if it is yet another impossible task being laid before him, but at the moment he wants nothing more than to grind his face into the floor.

“Sit down,” he says abruptly.

Ren dithers.

“I said,” he says, acerbic. “Sit _down_.”

Ren sits. Not on the sofa, as he had meant. But on the floor, by his legs.

Neither of them are able–physically or mentally–to return to their old routine. Neither of them can beat each other mercilessly into the ground right now, both for the fierce joy of landing a punch and for the clarity that pain brings. The mutual agreement of being the only two people in the universe who understand what the other needs, and are willing to give it, however, remains. 

This requires finesse.

Hux reaches out and, surprising even himself, cradles his face. His skin, even now, is so much warmer than his own hands and the warmth is jarring.

Ren looks up at him, something too angry to call pleading yet too lost to call demanding in his eyes.

He lets the pad of his thumb drift over his cheek. Ren closes his eyes, the fall of his eyelashes on his cheekbone unbearably vulnerable.

The gauze is rough beneath his fingers.

Hux digs the flat of his thumb into the raw, barely-healed gash the scavenger brat cut into Ren and drags _down_.

Ren’s jaw flexes and the corded muscle of his neck and shoulders twitch as he stifles any sounds of pain. Red blooms on the sterile white of the gauze, until he can feel the hot wetness of blood on his skin.

He can feel Ren’s hand drift, wrap around the delicate bone of his ankle where his pulse flutters just beneath the skin.

He releases the pressure. Ren takes a deep breath in, slow exhale out. The worry lines that bent his brow have lessened.

Hux finds that, watching him, the magma has sunk back down to manageable heights.

He removes his hand. Ren sways slightly, as if part of him wants to follow that point of contact.

There is a thin film of blood on his thumb. He licks it off. Ren makes a small sound below him, as if he had been hit.

“Will I see you again?” Hux asks. “After this?”

Ren’s eyes slide shut. “I must finish my training,” he says tonelessly. “I trust that my master has my best interests in mind.”

He feels faintly furious for a brief moment that another should take Ren’s discipline in hand, then drops it. Ridiculous. He is a cog in the machine that is the First Order and nothing more.

They sit in this slow and tentative moment for a long time, Ren’s fingers still curled around his ankle. Hux’s fingers slowly, cautiously, lace into that unruly mop of hair and hold him tight.

Neither of them make a move to leave. Not yet.

After what feels like a quiet eon, Ren’s fingers tighten around his ankle and let go as he rises to stand. Hux goes with him, his fingers slipping through his hair like trying to hold water.

“Well,” he says at last. “We will see you off next cycle.”

“Yes,” Ren says.

“I wish you.” He hesitates, just for a moment. “Success. In your training, Lord Ren.”

Those eyes drift shut again, a slow assent.

Impulsively, furiously, enraged at every action he takes, Hux grabs a handful of his overlong, messy hair and yanks him down. Ren’s eyes are dammably wide, shocked, and that is the final straw that tips him over the edge. Hux crushes his lips against his, biting savagely at the curve of his lower lip, the taste of blood so very familiar on the very same lips he had split so many times before.

When he pulls away, Ren is still standing there, frozen. His lips are red-stained, and he can see his own teethmarks on him.

“Come back to me,” Hux says, furious, “victorious or not at all.”

Ren grins at him, the same infuriating cocky lopsided smirk he has grown so accustomed to, and runs a gloved finger over the mess Hux has left of his lips. Sloppily, gently, he drags his own bloodied finger over Hux’s lips, painting them the same shade of bright red, and turns to leave, helmet tucked under one arm.

Hux watches him go, Kylo Ren’s blood coppery on his tongue, and bites his own lips so hard he draws blood.

Around them, the _Finalizer_ hums and shifts into lightspeed.

**Author's Note:**

> Find me on tumblr at a-flickering-soul.tumblr.com! Kudos and comments greatly appreciated, and please show the artist some love! I will pass on all comments to them!


End file.
